Noun

Singular song

Plural songs

song (plural songs)

1. A musical piece with lyrics (or "words to sing"); prose that one can sing.

   He wrote a beautiful song about her.

   • 1852, Mrs M.A. Thompson, “The Tutor's Daughter”, in Graham's American Monthly Magazine of Literature, Art, and Fashion, page 266:

     In the lightness of my heart I sang catches of songs as my horse gayly bore me along the well-remembered road.

2. A musical sound by a bird.
3. A musical sound by insect, whale or some other animal which sounds melodious to humans.

   I love hearing the song of canary birds.

4. Something that cost only a little.

   He bought that car for a song.

Derived terms

• birdsong
• on song
• singsong
• Song of Solomon
• Song of Songs
• songsheet
• song thrush
• songwriter

A song is a metrical composition intended or adapted for singing, especially one in rhymed stanzas; a lyric; a ballad. (exceptions would be a cappella songs). The lyrics of songs are typically of a poetic, rhyming nature, although they may be religious verses or free prose.

Songs are typically for a solo singer, though they may also be in the form of a duet, trio, or composition involving more voices. See part song. (Works with more than one voice to a part, however, are considered choral.) Songs can be broadly divided into many different forms, depending on the criteria used. One division is between "art songs", "pop songs", and "folk songs". Other common methods of classification are by purpose (sacred vs secular), by style (dance, ballad, Lied, etc), or by time of origin (Renaissance, Contemporary, etc).

A song is a piece of music for accompanied or unaccompanied voice or voices or, "the act or art of singing," but the term is generally not used for large vocal forms including opera and oratorio. However, the term is "often found in various figurative and transferred sense (e.g. for the lyrical second subject of a sonata...)." The word "song" has the same etymological root as the verb "to sing" and the OED defines the word to mean "that which is sung".

A song is a relatively short musical composition. Colloquially, song is often used to refer any music composition, even those without vocals.

Sourced

• Song opens a window to the secret places of the soul.
  • Habad. quoted in Siegel et al. compilers and eds. (1973) The Jewish Catalogue, p.211. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America. ISBN 0827600429.

• It is best of all trades, to make songs, and the second best to sing them.
  • Hilaire Belloc, On Everything, ‘On Song.’

• Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
  • Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark.

• The best days of the church have always been its singing days.
  • Theodore L. Cuyler, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 554.

Unsourced

• Chamber music—a conversation between friends.
  • Catherine Drinker Bowen

• Listen kid, take my advice, never hate a song that has sold a half million copies!
  • Irving Berlin speaking to Cole Porter.

• Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else.
  • Samuel Johnson

• If an opera cannot be played by an organ-grinder, it is not going to achieve immortality.
  • Thomas Beecham

• Classical music is the kind we keep thinking will turn into a tune.
  • Kim Hubbard